Home is where your hat is?

The packers have come and packed and the movers have left with almost all of our worldly possessions... though we do still have the clothes that will be packed in the suitcases that will follow us for the next few months until reunited with our belongings.

I find myself sitting in the structure that use to be our home, which is now nothing more than a shell of a house. It makes me ponder what makes a house a home? Is it the artwork and artifacts that have been collected and the memories attached to them? Perhaps it is the artwork the kids have done that we have taped to the walls for all to see.  Or is it just the presence of having our family all in the same place?

I have lived somewhat of a nomadic life and always with the expression that "home is where your hat is". Whether it was a house in Okinawa, a dorm room in Moscow, Russia, the rack in a Navy submarine or any of the many other places I have hung my hat. Well I have my hat and family with me and this shell that once was a home just feels like a house... waiting for someone else to make it a home.

I gaze to the wall looking for the clock that I have so often looked at before to tell me the time, but no clock. I reach for the book that has always been there to show one of the kids a picture of a bird I saw, but no book. It's frustrating at times going from a home to a house, but it is times like this that allow me to reflect and put myself into my own perspective.

When I see the handprints on the walls where the kids have come around the corner hanging on so they don't slip and fall or I hear the echo of them talking in the living room, I feel there might be a little piece of home left after all.  ~Bones